Sunday, January 16, 2011

58-06-07/05: the "Brown Sisters"

The seedling at top is 58-06-05, the lower photo is of its sister, 58-06-07. There were other selections from this cross back in '07, but they were discarded for various reasons. (I seem to recall the others were rather ordinary oranges and soft yellows; nothing remarkable) These two were kept for their remarkable coloring, the first one being the most dramatic of the two, as you can see. It is very difficult to capture the color of either with a camera, but these photos come close to being accurate. If you are familiar with the old Floribunda 'Jocelyn', or Sam McGredy's 'Brown Velvet', then you have some idea how these two look.

58-06-07 (the second one) has very shapely flowers very reminiscent of its seed parent. 1-72-1 often breeds bloom form like this, which is why Moore liked working with it so much. (That and the fact that it often breeds good, strong colors) I'm not sure about the future of 58-06-07 though, since it doesn't produce quite enough volume of bloom, tending to produce one or two blooms at the end of a shoot. That ain't a trait I like to see in my work, so I may try it as a breeder and just leave it on the bench for a while.

The other one, the richly colored 58-06-05, is a much more generous bloomer, producing most of its bloom in clusters of three or more, and quite a lot of them too. Like its sister, it is a tallish, upright grower, although it is well branched, eventually forming a pillar-shaped bush to about 4 or 5 feet tall. No doubt it could be trained into a bushier form, if you wanted to.

This year, I have decided to submit this variety to Rogue Valley Roses to auction off the naming rights. If it works out, I will likely select a new seedling every year to auction off. Rogue Valley doesn't yet have any information on their site to announce the details of this offer, but I expect it will be coming quite soon. I'll let you know more about it when it happens.